Never Know Defeat, Never Taste Despair
by Stuch
Summary: Trained as assassins and called peacekeepers. Shadow Marshals wage the new war against the Helghast whilst everyone is told they do the opposite. A tale of intrigue, murder and useless politics, against a backdrop of public suffering and self-interest.
1. Chapter 1

Corner offices and intercoms, soldiers surrounded by glass and a mile off the ground. Watching rain fall in long, stretching sheets toward the wall. Showpiece at his hip waiting for the opening salvos of words from New Helghan and ready on the tigger with empty posturing and denials. Honest conversations of opposite meanings. A sea of refracted neon is the new battlefield, the enemy invisible until they decide to show themselves, blurred borders either side of that sure, man-made line through the map, the whole planet. One of the few up in the brass with memories of a real war, desk away from the windows, the butt of colleagues jokes. His coughs are long and bend him double, bitter iron on the tongue.

A flash draws his eye, a new spot of light on that well-remembered pattern. Others disappear around it, a thick, dark plume cuts its way up into the rain. The intercom buzzes minutes after the dull thud reaches him through the glass. Yes. Yes I think they would say that. Anybody claim responsibility? Who?

* * *

Two extra blocks in the rain, ground boiling in harsh light. Past one grocery store to another, some Hig kid worked in the first. The apathetic, minimum-wage stare bore into him like the eyes of a corpse, took the man back to Helghan itself and that first kill. Helghast crushed under the front leg of his intruder on landing, face red and blood from the ears. Body armour holding everything in, pushing his innards into his chest. Hot damn! Oh fuck, sucks to be him! Ho, fuck!

Talked a lot back then, riding in like a goddamn hero. Shooting up Higs like it was cool. And now it's all depression and the slow ticking of time, half-hatred and half-PTSD. Could only have been worse if he'd paid with ISA-veteran food stamps. Worth those two extra blocks in the torrent. And the one time he ordered for delivery, nearly put a round through the peep-hole at that pale, fish-lens head on the other side. Higs everywhere, surrounded again.

Spend six months filling them with lead only to give them half of your home. Everywhere he looked was a face he spent his whole life calling the enemy, keep the hatred under wraps. Knowing it's wrong but never able to just shrug it away. Hide it, suck that shit up. Neighbours now, gotta put on that big ol' liberal grin. Too old to change, to let go of those grievances or the thick bigotry. So the veteran marine festers, surrounded by reminders and triggers, creeping dread that everything he fought for was in vain. The Second Extrasolar War, started by the Helghast invasion of Vekta and ending with a half-veiled attempt at another. He remembers the riots when the solution was announced, the eruption of confused anger. A war machined forced to switch down so many gears to humanitarian mission. Your son fought bravely for the safety of Vekta, also you have some new neighbours. Government buildings vandalised, weeks of protest.

But objectors couldn't have stopped the exodus with their rage any more than if they had tried to push against the ships themselves. Dark early days; ISA marines ignored and lost by the new state things formed violent militias at night. Executions of anyone suspected of being in the Helghast military, hot and heavy fear in the air. Integration was never to be with the two governments just telling their peoples to play nice. Construction of the wall was a necessary evil.

The marine knows there's no place for him now, no space for the instinctive desire to kill every Helghast he sees. He stews in the tiny apartment, sometimes at the window leading them with a loaded pistol until he's just a twitch in the finger away. The war goes on, he knows, in the shadows. Away from eyes hearts and minds. We're all friends and smiles. Knives only in the back. Meetings and discussions, ever more concessions to those bastards. They send their soldiers over in secret, quiet cowards in the night. How many terrorist groups now? No friends, no real foes, just propaganda and simple meals. Life of an old killer.

Their numbers dwindle, already decimated from the war, the nuke, the Terracide. Those handfuls who stalked Vekta City in ISA death squads would quieten into racist rallies and further still into impotent drinking buddies. "You see what they's giving the Higs these days? No jobs for fucking veterans." All of them connected by the hacking cough, "Hig's Lung" they called it and it was just a matter of time before it ate them inside out. Drop before you're fifty, maybe drag it out if you're lucky or you've got the insurance, the cash, the connections. The dead world gets the last laugh, carried back in the intimate linings of its destroyers, as though you could ever forget. The fearsome, burning clouds or the sand-blasted neck, nightmares about weather? Only kids laugh about that, VSA upstarts chasing shadows and imposing curfews.

Home with the groceries, Hig working in the other store now. Looking at him brought on a coughing fit, memories of cool, clean deaths and kills. Corpses churned by grenades, their rotations tinged with morbid carnival. A dead smile curls his mouth as he reaches his door. Garish daydreams of that first Helghast lifting the intruder off his own chest, the organs shifting back down from his neck. Get inside. Calm this panic and horror. Flashes of body bags. Nobody wins, hatred only lies beneath held under the pressure of politics. Waiting for that spark. He opens the door, the apartment is vaporised, the marine with it, the rain is steam outside. All is fire and chaos in the street. A spark. Politicians make phonecalls of apology and denial. One group takes responsibility. The dead veteran might have appreciated the honesty.

* * *

"They give us half their world to ease their guilt. But can the accused be fit to pass his own sentence? Half a world for a whole? The Vektans offer and the Visari bitch accepts. Her father, the true Visari, would not have taken this. His statues now stand as a testament to that which has been forgotten. Today, we pay homage to his memory in blood. The execution of one who took part in the death of our world. Murderer who lived on unpunished, treated like a hero. All ISA personnel are guilty of Terracide, a charge with no lessening in time, all will meet justice. He was just the first.

"We, the Black Hand, make it our life purpose to bring death to those whom the Helghast Government call friends. All true Helghast should recognise our cause. All Vektans should fear our wrath. Vekta, all of it, is ours by right."

And the Helghast side of the wall, of the planet. Day time in Vekta City is a hot, heavy night in New Helghan, shared evening light dominated by the wall's long shadow. The average Helghast braced themselves for the inevitable VSA backlash, the crackdowns and embargoes and extra security on immigration. And worst the shadow marshals. Sold to the Vektan public as knightly paragons or peace and virtue, the Helghast fear them. How many had even seen one? All they know is the sound of doors being broken down next door and missing neighbours. It was worse in the early days, when memories of the second war were still fresh and vivid.

When even the smallest whiff of dissent was stomped out by VSA - still almost entirely made up of ISA marines - dropships in broad daylight. Stay in your homes, don't resist and don't run. Died in custody. Suicides with hands tied. Chasing illegals back to wall like they were on safari. Snatches and interrogations, remind them whose home it is. And the Vektans wonder why they plant bombs. Terracide isn't enough, put 'em down and hold 'em there. Eventually the embittered veterans start succumbing to "Hig Lung", VSA evens off and softens but the hatred remains. Helghast fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Hate because they hated.

Because they told stories, wonderful tales of a world that was once theirs and was taken away. Of a man who would have led them to victory before he was assassinated in cold blood. They neglect the centuries of hardship and toil. The greed. Few Helghast remember that lust for power that led to the First Extrasolar War but are quick to condemn the ISA for the Terracide after the Second. And those young men and women who grow up in the glare of VSA searchlights become lost teens, who wonder why their hateful parents don't fight back. Why they don't rise up once more against their oppressors, just lie down on the floor when they come to call. A rifle butt to the face once is enough to teach most. "Kid's got stones," marines talk only in smirks, "Hit him again." Why not fight father?

He doesn't answer because he is tired, maybe he would have fought before but now he just tries to make the best of things. Others though, swaggering types in second-hand Helghan Army armour will answer for him. Calling their fathers cowards, for bending the knee and giving in. Your parents are not true Helghast, they say, no more than the new Visari. And they lure those young, angry men and women in with tales like their parents did. But tales of what will be, once all of Vekta is Helghan again, once they take back what is theirs by right. First though, we must fight. Will you fight? Are you not true Helghast? And fathers are left wondering what happened to their sons.

In the slums they train, they join groups and cycle-feed into each other's hatred, wire into one another, brothers and sisters. Some move over the wall, live quiet lives behind enemy lines and watch and wait. The rest stay, protest and grow bold against Vektan aggression. Some leave - too much for them or they see the inevitable conclusion of incarceration or death - but it only grows in the others the level of fanaticism. They study, learn, fight until the word comes down the chain. "Are you ready to die for the cause?" A name and address, a device, a day-pass through the wall. This is it Brother, the Black Hand's time has come.

And he does them proud, waits in the street until the target leaves and slips inside the apartment, then comes the sweat and memory of mortal promises. They say he'll feel no pain but how do they know? Maybe he'll feel all the pain in the world forever, is it how people died during the Terracide? Forever churning and repeating. The Helghast focuses on one thing, that if it is to be eternal torment then the ISA scum will share in it. The door opens, everything is light and heat before he so much as processes the man's face. The words of his tutors and brothers roll through his mind in and instant.

"This day we rise, Brother. Above the pettiness of politics and recriminations. True cause and purpose. All has been toward it and whilst the means is yours, the end is for all. The Black Hand proves itself as the only group capable of moving the Helghast forward, with the will to do what is needed. They will all know our name."

And in those high, glass towers the name is known now too. The response is agrued and thrown around in secret meetings with redacted minutes. Regardless of their eventual compromise, several citizens in Vekta City stir at the coverage of the bombing. Some smile, some roll their eyes. But all gather equipment and get a hold of their handlers, shadow marshalls awaken from their professional hibernation into readiness of their skills. Maintain the peace, their mantra, no matter the price.


	2. Chapter 2

The VSA dropship hangar, a dirty dull fat slug of a structure, sat far down the slope of the dam away from the glass and money, the bowels of New Vekta. Inside was an orchestra of repairs and slow-moving transports, shouts and busy work. The pilots and crew on alert since the bomb had cut leave and lengthened shifts. The personnel were distinctly divided into two groups, one larger and louder. Clean cut men and uniforms, all salutes and procedure. Fair few sticks up asses and down-nose vantage, barking at their subordinates.

But they learned from the best. Ready at the moment's notice to brown-nose the VSA brass, desk jockeys real antsy after the attack and certain they needed moved somewhere more secure. Dropship, sir, just for you, sir. Bright and clean, shining beacon of Vektan engineering that streaked across the sky, swaggering flyboys stepping out and bumping helmets. Big, toothy-goof grins but always in competition.

"Had a full bird the other day." Next guy had a general, naturally. Ain't no shit.

"Screw all that, I carried a shadow marshal. Dude was badass."

"Bullshit, fucking shadow marshal? Only Wall Hoppers ever get those spooks."

Only at this do the other group so much as start to take notice. Ignoring the brass buffers for the most part, they were quieter and more serious individuals. They knew they carried some strangeness, some quirk that separated them and played on it in the hangar. Keeping to themselves, fewer and filthier, personalised ships and uniforms - paintwork and patches. They adopted the named 'Wall Hoppers' after it emerged as a slur from the others, they took it and make it their own, pretended they came up with it in the first place.

They all started out clean-shaven brown-nosers until they showed something to the contrary, banking a little to hard sometimes just to look out a side window and see nothing but the ground ready to end things for you, hard. Pushed the machine a little harder, took the brass for a ride, "I want that pilot's name and rank!" Wiping coffee off those pressed VSA blues. Such things were taken very seriously by the pilots' CO, who would quietly shuffle them over to the Wall Hoppers, "You'll be happier."

And most were. It wasn't like the old days of the war, those heady Intruder days when thrillseekers were flying into hell with badasses in tow. Those relics were in the VSA flight school, coughing up dust from a dead world, the only source of combat readiness in piloting terms. Peace doesn't require the sort of skills found in the Wall Hoppers. Breakneck. Balls to the wall. Making your insides weightless while your feet pulled two gees. Laughing over the comms, "Can you believe they pay me for this? Fuck." Believe it, but they won't talk about what they really get paid for or why most times of the day you would find them catching up on sleep. Faces still murky with camouflage, flaking in their short beards. It was the worst kept secret, what those pilots did, who they took over the wall and who they brought back. Never returning straight to base, making deliveries first. Saluting nobody, fist bumping shadow marshals and special forces troops. As much spooks as any they carried.

"So hey, um, what's it like over there? Like, really."

"Always dark when I'm there." Working in the dark, living in it. Words lost to it, mission de-briefs striped through with streaks of it. Eyes only but seeing nothing. Stories sometimes, popping up on the news, of Helghast immigrants who leap out windows. Ask the Wall Hoppers and they'll just smile, like they'd heard the oldest joke in the world. No wonder they stuck together, that brooding group of raccoon-eyed thrill seekers, only people they could speak openly with was each other. Hushing up like brothers when mother passes by.

Things had been quiet before the suicide attack, a few recons, pick-ups and drop-offs to those nameless VSA ghouls who spent most of their military lives on the other side. Some never came back, stretched out too far, went darker than dark. Forgotten; new shadow marshals know better than to ask about who they were replacing. And the Wall Hoppers had slowed themselves down, switched gears to something more stable, the odd night patrol on their own side of the wall, reading or playing chess with each other. It's war, they would say, proper war and damn if we ain't just the knights. But talk of shadow marshals given special flights normally reserved for brass was all they needed to hear. Spooks rising from their civilian graves and visiting those ivory towers for missions. They knew it would be war against the Black Hand, heard even by them in backs of their dropships after the snap of a finger - a name given only in screams is an interesting one. Just a matter of time before a shadow marshal came sauntering into the hangar with special force cronies.

No fanfare at the arrival, three men entered the hangar with unwashed uniforms, heavy duffel bags of equipment and stern expressions.

"Can I help you boys with sumthin'?" big grin from one of the trumped-up taxi drivers.

"You can start by calling me sir, lieutenant," the most clean-cut of the three said, an easy menace in the voice, used to bookending conversations with threats, "That any way to talk to a shadow marshal? I'm looking for-"

"Oh shit! A marshal and two special grunts?" Handshake from an approaching Wall Hopper, scruffy blonde and lean. Couldn't have been over twenty-five, but to look in his eyes, only his eyes, you would never be able to tell how old he was. The same was true of all of them but the brass-buffer who felt especially left out and tried to pull rank on the only one he could.

"You should call him sir, Wall Hopper."

"He doesn't have to call me sir, lieutenant."

"All three of you mean we's snatching up some poor Hig bastard. Get to cause me a ruckus."

"We have a few hours before- that'll be all lieutenant."

"Uh," a confused handsome features creased in thought, "I mean, yessir." An unrequited salute and he stumbled off, the two grunts smirked to themselves.

"You have to deal with those stiffs all the time?"

"I used to be one of those stiffs, man."

"We were all like that once, life is better off the leash."

"Ain't that the fucking truth."

What else were those angry, young Vektans supposed to do? As lost as their Helghast counterparts. Knowing nothing but their elders' anger at the enemy moving in next door, they joined up into the VSA. Only to find it stalled and bloated, too many officers with too few grunts to throw in the path of bullets that no longer flew. Army career spent behind desks in New Vekta, if you had the smarts or keen eye you would find yourself in military intelligence, forever searching for patterns in private phonecalls. Intercepting and listening, waiting for that bite between trips to the water cooler. The thundering ISA machine of the second war dismantled then, excess killed off with time - old soldiers coughing themselves to death guarding the wall.

Those dumb, tough bastards who listened wide-eyed to drunken stories of M82s popping Hig grapes at a hundred yards found few options. Back then they'd have leapt off Intruders onto that fiery dust of Helghan, pouring out hate until their clips ran dry. Where to point it now? All that spinal column anger, reacting to the mere mention of Higs before it had chance to fire any synapses. They could work immigration, good excuse to shove Higs around and refuse entry on nothing but personal gripes.

Better yet for those with their brains in their necks were the evening patrols, curfew enforcement. No better way to flex such little power, stopping Higs on sight in the street, "Where's your papers?" and with audible disappointment, "Everything looks fine, get moving." Quietly waiting, yearning, for that night when they make a run for it. Chasing after them through the flashing neon of the New Vektan night, hanging out the side door by one arm - their skin tight on the face, tight on the skull - hollering after their quarry, "Where you runnin', boy? You ain't reachin' the wall from here!"

And they re-tell the story a dozen times; "...the pilot gets me in real close, ain't no shit. Hig's running alongside the ship and I jus' grab 'im and throw him in. Crazy shit when you get a Wall Hopper, man, fuckers can fly." Hig turns up at the detention centre pre-bruised. Lotta steps, sir, lotta things to trip over. Worse if the VSA marine is particularly mean, a real brute near the end of his shift and at the announcement of a runner just tells the pilot to hold her steady. Three pops and he asks if there's any bags on board. Doesn't want to waste time coming back out for the 'dead streak of shit'. Blows his load, lights a cigarette and flies back to base with the stiff beside him. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Beyond security was special forces, cream of the crop, hushed reverence from the grunts when they walked by, "Shit man, few more missions and I'll be walking by with those badasses." Prove themselves and they disappear for weeks, taken away from Vekta City. Training in the wilds and cold, all strictly eyes only and confidential, trained by shadow marshals so they say. What is for sure is that the wild, wide-lashing fury comes back focused to a pinpoint, ebs and flows, controlled and released in bursts of efficient violence. The hatred too, burned into the back of the mind by those old war stories, nurtured and controlled. Stone cold killers in a world where there was supposed to be no more need for them.

And the shadow marshals were the worst (or the best, that queer duality of such things), intelligent but single-minded, honour and duty-bound to keep the peace. Even if that meant starting and ending micro-wars, small contacts into enemy territory, vigorously denied. Trained from teenage years, never plucked from existing military service, dogmatic and jingoistic. Crusaders in the most awful way, with all the self-righteous anger and means to release it. How many war crimes did they commit over the wall? Because they knew they could away with it, never so much as discussed or mentioned.

Had it been war in the purest, national sense, legal in those ludicrous ways that only war can be, those involved might have been held to some sort of account or become honest true targets of the New Helghan government. But as it was those trips over the wall to kill, maim, capture and terrorise were played out by quiet, hateful men as though they were the very finest of adventures.

And one peaceful night a dropship slipped over that great slab lit only on its top edge. The four crew smiled to each other and themselves, watched that great sea of twinkling light they called home give way to a near pitch abyss. Only the smallest, more affluent (relatively) areas of New Helghan had constant access to electricity. In darkness though, is where ghosts and spooks prefer to tread.


End file.
